Get Ready World: The U.S.-Russian Rivalry Is Back

Summary: The Ukraine crisis has opened up a period of intense geopolitical competition, rivalry, and even confrontation between Russia and the West. The area of competition is again Eastern Europe; only this time, further to the east of its Cold War namesake.

The Ukraine crisis has ended the era of post–Cold War engagement, which failed to culminate in integration between the West and Russia. In a stunning reversal, the crisis has opened up a period of intense geopolitical competition, rivalry, and even confrontation between Moscow and Washington, but also between Moscow and Brussels.

The area of competition is again Eastern Europe; only this time, further to the east of its Cold War namesake. In a region which includes Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and also the unrecognized Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh, fault lines have developed both within and between countries.

Some of these countries, like Georgia, lean toward the European Union; others, such as Belarus, toward Russia; some are battleground states; and there is only one outlier, Azerbaijan. The “gray” buffer zone between Europe and Russia, which has existed ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union, is unraveling.

Russia is pivoting away from Europe and the West. It is pivoting toward itself as a unique civilization related to, but separate from, Western Europe. It is also pivoting to its former empire in Eurasia, redesigned as a Russia-led economic and security union. Lastly, it is pivoting to China, which is seen as a new center of global economic and political power.

All these changes are happening in an atmosphere of intensifying competition. The revolutionary coup in Kiev, supported by Washington, was interpreted in Moscow as a prelude to Ukraine’s eventual accession to NATO. President Putin responded with his own coup in Crimea, which resulted in the peninsula’s incorporation into Russia. The U.S.-Russian tussle over Ukraine has become the first case of open, great-power clash since the end of the Cold War.

In this new rivalry, Europe is both a player, as America’s ally in NATO, and an area of competition in its own right. Europeans are divided in their attitudes toward Russia. Those geographically closer and still reeling from the Soviet era are more wary than those farther afield, who are more relaxed; political elites with little interest in Russia are more critical than the business circles, who have something to lose; and anti–European Union, anti–United States elements see Putin as their ally.

Although the new rivalry is confined to a relatively small region and is peripheral to the United States’ and even Europe’s core interests, it has implications for the wider world. Russia’s shift to the east, which strengthens its alignment with China, is gaining more strategic depth. The Sino-Russian gas deal, signed in Shanghai on May 21, embodies and symbolizes a new quality to the relationship between Moscow and Beijing.

Four decades after Nixon’s groundbreaking trip to China, the strategic triangle between the United States, China and Russia looks very different, with China, rather than America, having better relations with the two other powers. This puts Japan in a more difficult situation: Tokyo is Washington’s ally; it fears Beijing and hopes to improve relations with Moscow. Yet Prime Minister Shinzo Abe perseveres in his strategy of rapprochement with Russia, and looks forward to hosting Putin in the fall of 2014.

This new competition is essentially being fought on the terrain of economics and information flows and will eventually be decided by economic factors and popular attitudes. This relates to Ukraine, which faces a dire economic situation. This relates to Russia and its ability to use Western economic sanctions to reinvent itself. The alternatives are the country’s breakdown and a possible breakup, or it becoming China’s economic satellite. This relates to Moscow’s Eurasian Union project, which will rise or fall on economic, not geopolitical grounds. And of course, it relates to the European Union, which faces a conflict between the need for further integration and many people’s reluctance to go for it, as evidenced in the elections to the European Parliament, also held on May 25.

As for the United States, its foreign policy can only be as effective as its resources permit. Whether in Ukraine, NATO or the Middle East, Washington has been limiting its commitment. This makes for a more level playing field.

Putin, now senses, that the moment has come to move against the USA in order to weaken its authority in the best way he can. He has never had much time for the West in any shape or form, as he prefers the old ways of doing things, which relies heavily on the mistakes of the Soviet past, which he seems not too want to learn from. If he succeeds; which he may well do, we have a lot to fear, as, Putin, fears nobody, especially, that his ally, China, seems to like the way he goes about doing things. Putin, needs to be watched very carefully; as, he is a danger and a threat to us all and will always be so, while he rules, as he likes it that way; as once a bully, always a bully.

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TT

June 01, 20142:19 am

Having read your essay "Reading Russia Right" (Carnegie Policy Brief, Special Edition 42, October 2005), Russia with its autocratic political market economy and the American-led West with democratic political market economies were on the way to a collision. (In the same vain, a collision between China and the West is inevitable unless miraculously China's Communist Party gives up power and free elections are held.)
You are correct in stating that the competition between Russia and West "will eventually be decided by economic factors and popular attitudes".
Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a lot of change in Russia's economy, nor is Russia driving fundamental structural changes in neighbouring economies for which it has taken responsibility or to which it has bind itself. There does not appear to be much economic reform happening in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Abkhazia or the newly integrated Crimea. Russia has taken on responsibility for economies that look decidedly fossilised. If Russia wants to avoid later down the line the sort of economic chaos that economies such as Greece caused the EU, Russia cannot afford to play ostrich, burying its head in the sand. Hard economic decisions need to be made just as the EU has with the PIGS economies within the EU.
There is an economic maxim that has rung true throughout the years; 'there is no such thing as a free lunch'.

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Viktor

June 03, 20141:10 am

"The revolutionary coup in Kiev, supported by Washington, was interpreted in Moscow as a prelude to Ukraine’s eventual accession to NATO. President Putin responded with his own coup in Crimea, which resulted in the peninsula’s incorporation into Russia." A BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO EVENTS - the first one was initiated and carried out from the ground - by ordinary people and USA, EU only supported it afterwards without any invasion ; the Crimea case with military invasion and annexation is something completely different, totally.

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